


Even the Trees Remember

by MadameFluffnStuff



Series: The Cuddling Hour Is Upon Us--ficlets from tumblr [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Badass Katara (Avatar), Domestic Fluff, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Katara is best girl fight me, Post-Episode: s03e18-21 Sozin's Comet, Protective Katara (Avatar), Romantic Fluff, again I say that Katara is best girl, best girl, no beta we die like men, sweeties gonna sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27205843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameFluffnStuff/pseuds/MadameFluffnStuff
Summary: Aang couldn't remember, but he couldn't forget, either. He wanted it to go away.Katara shows him otherwise.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar)
Series: The Cuddling Hour Is Upon Us--ficlets from tumblr [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981606
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40





	Even the Trees Remember

**Author's Note:**

> (from tumblr) @itsmoonpeaches' ask for the hurt/comfort dialogue prompt:
> 
> Kataang + #19: "Don't touch me!"

“He said it would make me forget!” Aang flung his arm, and another wave of reckless airbending cut through what remained of the tree. The winded blade gulped the air out of Katara’s ears in a strange way that made them  _ pop _ . “He  _ lied _ ! Why did he  _ lie _ to me?!”

Katara chased after him. It was hard to track Aang’s silhouette with only half a moon to light her way. Orange and yellow robes were her burning waypoint; churned earth and splintered tree corpses lined the warpath in Aang’s wake. 

“Aang!”

Aang didn’t look at her. Katara wasn’t sure if he could even  _ hear _ her. Crimson colored his face with furious sorrow; his every breath tore a howling cry from the wounded beast hiding in the cage of his soul.

“Sokka said it would make me  _ forget _ , but it  _ doesn’t _ ! He  _ lied _ ! It doesn’t help  _ anything _ !”

Aang staggered against a tree. He cut it down with a careless saber of wind that Katara had to duck for fear of losing her head. The tree groaned once, like it was bemoaning the Avatar’s betrayal of nature, before its severed half toppled through a dozen other canopies to the ground.

“Aang, you need to calm down!  _ Please!  _ You need to stop before you get hurt!” 

Aang finally looked at her. His eyes, wide and wet and searching for something that wasn’t there, cut her open so deeply that Katara almost clutched her chest to stem the bleeding.  _ Grief _ like she hadn’t seen since they visited the Southern Air Temple weighed Aang down in heavy chains. A mountain of self-loathing sat on his shoulders, and his broken heart poured rivers down his cheeks. 

There was a pause in his destruction—Katara wasn’t going to pass up the chance. She approached him like he was a wild catdeer, and she tried to ignore the way he trembled and flinched from her every footstep like he really was one. 

Aang’s voice was the squeak of a machine about to break. “Sokka...He said it would m-make me forget...” He curled into himself. “Sokka said...H-He said it would…He…so f-forget and…a-and...”

Katara hushed and cooed him, and she tried so  _ very _ hard to suppress the bloodlust burning under her skin when she smelled the alcohol on his breath. 

She was going to have  _ words _ with her brother.

“Aang, it’s okay. You’re okay. Sokka is a moron and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. C’mere,” she offered her hand to him, “let’s go home, okay?”

“Can’t...Can’t go home…”

“Why not?”

“Can’t remember...Can’t remember home...Gyatso...I can’t remember…” Aang hugged himself, and it took every ounce of Katara’s restraint not to pull him into her arms. “I can’t forget, but I can’t remember, either. I can’t  _ take _ it anymore. I want it to go  _ away _ . I...I-I just—W-Were those good times even real? Is  _ this _ even real?” He looked at her,  _ begging _ her for something she couldn’t give him. His voice broke and shattered Katara’s heart. “Are  _ you _ even real?”

Katara swallowed. “Oh, Aang…”

Aang dropped to his knees and cradled his head like a bomb was about to drop. “I wanna forget...I wanna forget so  _ bad _ —I-I just can’t  _ remember _ anymore…” He pressed his brow to the grass. “I’m trying...I-I’m  _ trying _ …”

“Aang—”

“ _ Don’t touch me! _ ” He didn’t want to know the answer to whether or not she was real. He couldn’t take it if she wasn’t.

Katara swallowed the burning in her throat and steeled her shaky resolve into iron.

“Lemme—Lemme  _ go _ !” Aang squirmed like a newborn and whined and flailed just as loudly, but Katara didn’t let up her grip under his arms. She dragged him to one of the trees he cut down and sat them like its fresh stump was a dining table.

“Look,” Katara said. Aang tried to get up, but Katara wouldn’t let go of his hand. “ _ Look _ , Aang.”

“Look at  _ what _ ?” His voice was something worse than desperate. He slumped, the life and fight flushing out of him. “There’s nothin’ to see—I can’t  _ remember _ —”

“You  _ do _ remember.” Katara spoke as gently as she held his hand. Aang sniffled and made himself smaller than he was. Katara kissed his knuckles and massaged the tender belly of his palm—the most precious part of a bender—until his breathing slowed.

He didn’t stop crying. The burning knot in Katara’s throat didn’t stop growing, either.

“Oh, Aang…” She leaned over the stump so that her elbows rested on it. She held his hand in hers and peppered it with more kisses until he dragged his eyes up to hers. 

His eyes were empty and endless like a dry well that stretched on forever.

He looked so alone.

So incredibly alone.

Like he had spent those hundred years in the ice awake and without even Appa to keep him company.

“I—I-I can’t remember, K’tara...I can’t...I can’t, but I can’t forget, either…”

Katara soothed him with gentle coos and hushes. “I know, sweetie. I know.” She held his hand tighter. “It hurts. I know it must hurt you so  _ much _ it feels unbearable.” She cradled his face with her free hand. She tried to ignore the dagger in her heart that made every part of her  _ ache _ when he first flinched, taking a second to recognize her touch before pressing so  _ desperately _ into her that it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that he hadn’t felt a loving touch in years. “But you  _ do _ remember. You haven’t forgotten anything.”

Aang cocked his head like a hound to a high pitch. It would have been cute if it didn’t make Katara fight the urge to cry with him. “I...I haven’t?”

“No, you haven’t. Not really.” Katara tapped the rings lining the inner belly of the once large tree. “See this ring? And how narrow it is?”

“...m’yeah.”

“These rings are thin and remember a long drought. These rings are further apart and remember a bad flood.” 

Katara moved Aang’s hand over the stump’s memories. He flinched when the pads of his fingers brushed the grainy, black knobs curling crooked lightning through the wood. 

“This is a scar from a fire that burned through this forest a century ago. The scar is near the center—when the tree was very young—but the tree grew around it and made its scars a part of itself. From the outside, you could never tell that it happened, like maybe the tree forgot. But it remembers both all the good and all the bad. The bad didn’t stop it from growing.”

Aang wiped his eyes, and something more lost than thoughtful pinched his face in a scowl. 

The night air hummed its silence, void of the many patterings of small animals and other creatures scared away from the Avatar’s grieving. Aang’s hand was cold in Katara’s. That wasn’t right at all. Aang was  _ never _ cold, out or in.

Katara kissed his knuckles, reveled in the shadow of a smile she pulled from him, rubbed some warmth back into his fingers, and looked at him even though it made some part of her howl and claw her insides in its desperation to pull him closer.

Katara laid his hand flat on the stump of tree-rings and forest memories. She held his palm up and traced her finger down a dozen calluses and twice as many scars. 

“See this?” Katara spoke softly and traced his palm even softer. Her voice was hushed and cloudy, her words warm and wrapping around him like a hug. “This is your love line. You see how deep it is, especially in the beginning?”

“...Yeah.”

“This over here is your life line. It’s just as deep in the beginning. They’re both broken in a few places, though. One a bit more than the other. But that’s okay. Look at the top, here. The lines double back over to compensate for the breaks, and they double and triple at the ends.” She tapped the tree’s rings. “See? Even the trees remember. And you do, too.”

“So...So I’m a tree?” Aang looked so incredibly lost, even though they were in his own home.

Katara laughed, the sound hollow and dying like a candle in a harsh breeze. “No, you dork, you’re not a tree. But you remember, just like they do.” She smiled, and the gesture called his out to play even though he didn’t understand why. “Nothing is ever forgotten or gone for good. I know you remember why, Aang.”

Now Aang looked  _ truly _ lost and more desperate, but hopeful, than ever. “I...I do?”

Katara’s smile stretched a little wider as she curled his hand shut.

Aang blinked at her dumbly. He opened his fist like it was buried treasure he had stumbled upon. He nearly dropped the smooth little acorn resting between a callous and his life line.

Aang smiled. He sagged like a deflating war balloon, like his insides were more slush than bone. His heart tugged its seams back together, just a bit, and his mourning joy leaked over his cheeks. 

Aang laughed. The bubbles of giggles were lost, knowing not where they came from or why, but they grew in volume just as he opened his posture like he was going to hug her.

But Katara was already at his side, brushing them together. He was still cold, so Katara scooted closer and warmed him with tender touches and even more tender words. Aang couldn’t hear them, but they dug into the deepest parts of him and soothed the wounded beast limping out of the cage of his soul. Katara nuzzled her face to his, and his widening smile and even louder laughs pulled out the coal searing a hole in her throat. Her broken heart danced when he returned her affections, and the corner of her soul that he had claimed for himself cuddled, like her, into the arm wrapped around her shoulders. 

Katara laced her fingers with Aang’s and was gentle with him as though he were burned and bleeding. With her other hand, she guided him into a kiss, and her love line cradled the curve of his jaw. 

Aang smiled like a supernova and had Katara tugged into the space between his legs and pulled flush against his chest in the next second. She laughed along with him. Or maybe he was laughing with her? It didn’t matter. Aang paraded his joy in small kisses on whatever his lips could reach. 

Aang mumbled into her hair and held her tight like he might lose her. “Thank you, Katara.” His voice was quiet, like it was a thought he was sharing with her. “For everything.”

Katara wormed her way out of her Aang-cocoon just enough to kiss his cheek. “For you, my Forever Boy? Always.” 

Aang pressed his smile to her temple, and his laugh shook into her from where they were pressed together. His glee was genuine and warmed Katara from head to toe like she was sitting in front of a fire during a blizzard.

Katara pulled his arms even tighter around herself, but, somehow, she made it feel like she was hugging and holding him, instead.

The night hummed its peace in a gentle buzz, holding an undercurrent of shy animals creeping back to their homes. Aang cuddled closer to his home, too, and Katara molded into him like she was a foundation that could protect him through any storm.

“I love you, you dork,” she said in a voice so quiet it reached Aang like a thought. “And I’m not going anywhere.” The pressure in the air grew lighter. Aang sagged like the brace forcing him to bend into something that he wasn’t was suddenly ripped away.

And then he smiled like being happy was what his face was built for. 

And Katara’s kiss was a promise and a bandage all in one. 

“I love you...And I’ll make sure you  _ never _ forget it.”


End file.
